The new Michael Moore film reminded me of a misgiving I’ve been having for awhile now. Because, while not in his top 3, this is the second film where he actually goes abroad to see how other countries deal with problems we have here in America. But nobody else does that! Why?

It’s weird how even liberal, anti-patriotism, international-looking news outfits (your Democracy Nows and so forth) don’t care how other countries solve problems. Like they only care about other countries when something awful happens that they can blame on USA.

(which itself is a weird form of American Exceptionalism – this idea that the CIA did bad stuff, so therefore if ANYTHING bad happens, it’s because the USA is behind it, or supports it, or whatever. Like we’re the only country capable of fucking shit up)

(“Oh the Egyptian dictator or the Ukranian militias are backed by Washington – therefore those guys are our total puppets, we’re 100% to blame if anyone over there so much as scrapes their knee, and if we hadn’t interfered, the dictators and militias would doubtless deal with internal dissent by taking away snacks.” – I mean, they don’t say that outright, but that’s how they cover things).

So that’s always bugged me, but with this crazy 2016 election, All-Trump-All-The-Time media environment, it’s even more important that we look at other countries. Because, while Americans have spent the last 3 months trying to pick up our collective jaws off the friggin’ floor, banana republics have for decades had a ‘wacky strongman-with-some-kind-of-theatrical-gimmick’ as a standard category of politician. Not just in Presidential elections – but in local or Mayoral elections as well. So they’re ahead of us. They have a lot to teach us about how that shit works, and what to expect.

But patriotic Americans don’t like to admit what we’re turning into, and ultra-liberals don’t like talking about third world countries unless it’s a ‘poor brown victims of American Imperialism’ angle.

And since it looks like the shocks and surprises are going to keep coming, maybe some news outfit should try to stop REACTING and get AHEAD OF THE GAME by talking to some banana republic journalists, and giving them a chance to explain what America’s future is going to look like. Send correspondents to the Philippines, Peru, I dunno . . . Nigeria? Anywhere politics is flamboyant and theatrical. (pro tip: start with Catholic countries) Anywhere people campaign for local dog-catcher wearing cop-shades and fake medals. Find out ALL the gimmicky, crackpot candidates, and the various strategies they use, and make a database. Available on the internet.

Whether liberal or conservative, whether white or Black, native-born Americans are used to thinking of banana republic elections as nothing but exercises in mindless violence and deathsquads, but that’s just the national elections. They do propaganda and ads and slogans and scapegoating and infantilizing of voters over there, too. And while a lot of those third-world wacky-strongman-with-gimmick tactics wouldn’t translate to a high-tech USA media environment, a lot of those WOULD.

In fact, I’m – you know what, fuck it.

My kids need college money. I’ma start my own political consultancy firm for forward-looking American politicians. For a flat fee, I’ll let you subscribe to my newsletter that details all the banana-republic election gimmicks (from the last 40 years!) that, as America declines, will start to be frighteningly relevant.

For extra money (the Gold Member level), I’ll sell you a database that outlines which gimmicks from across the third world can be adapted to social media and cable news, which will save you the trouble of weeding out all the crap gimmicks I sold to the suckers who only wanted the basic package.

And of course at the Platinum level, I’ll personally instruct you on HOW to adapt those gimmicks to our American new-media environment. Sorry everyone, I’ll make the world a shittier place, but if I don’t do it, some TRULY evil mother WILL, and then I’ll be cut out of the moolah loop.

Goddamn it, you people! This could be the last free election before the whole system collapses from internal rot and corruption, and you’re just giving these states to Hillary?

Let me tell you something, my friends: THIS WHOLE CORRUPT SYSTEM you’re so outraged about IS YOUR OWN FAULT. It ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

Who kept voting for politicians who gave your jobs away, put your kids in jail, cut funding to your schools, allowed the NSA to read your mail, legalized a million ways for Wall St. to prey on you, and sent your kids out on a million bullshit wars THAT YOU CHEERED ON???? That was YOU guys.

And now you turn around and blame ‘corrupt Washington politicians’?!?!? FUCK you.

How could you POSSIBLY AND FOR DECADES not realize it’s your fault?

Oh yeah, because the GOP isn’t going to openly say, “You fucking idiots, keep cutting your own throats hahahahahaha!” . . . and we reformers are so desperate for any help, that the LAST thing we want to do, is alienate you crappified fence-sitting morons by pointing out your own complicity. So now, I gotta kiss your ass and pander to you, as you sit blissfully in your high chair, spilling your juice all over the place, blaming EVERYONE ELSE????

No more!

You hold our feet to the fire for every tiny gaffe, every tiny human mistake, you make jokes about our hair and hand gestures, while THE WHOLE TIME YOU WERE VOTING THE BIGGEST ASSHOLES INTO OFFICE AGAIN AND AGAIN. So who made the REAL gaffe, fuckers?

“Hey I voted for a guy that locked up more people than the Chinese government while taking huge bribes from Big Oil, I voted for that guy for 12 years, but WHOA, THAT POLITICIAN SAID A CURSE WORD, man I’m embarrassed for THAT guy. Sucks to be him!”

KISS MY ASS, AMERICA.

What, you thought I was going to drop the mic? I’m just getting warmed up. Turn the stove off, this is gonna take awhile.

Not only are you the most un-self-aware, hypocritical, irresponsible, low-information, judgmental-about-all-the-wrong-shit bunch of halfwits in the history of Democracy, but YOU’RE STILL DOING IT.

Even after I hipped you to the game, you’re STILL FUCKING DOING IT.

Because, you hear that?

That’s the sound of 90% of my fans switching to HRC simply because I told you the truth and you didn’t want to fucking hear it.

Great, the 2016 election is gonna turn out realllllll well for you people, you’ll get exactly what you deserve. Feh!

THE IRONY of MSM giving trump a free platform for months (i.e. how he never had to buy ads because the MSM gave him so much free time out of sheer sarcasm) and then going “aaah he’s winning?”.

I guess in their big, sophisticated, irony-filled Coastal Elite world, it was possible to explain their unlimited Trump-time as ‘hate-watching’ (i.e. ‘we’re just letting people see him for the buffoon he is!’) (but why not also let viewers ‘hate-watch’ Sanders?) . . . . but in middle America it was free publicity. The MSM’s own ‘ad revenues for our shareholders at all costs’ business model wound up biting them on their ass and electing a dork that their own shareholders can’t stand.

But at least we shareholders got those sweet dividends! I’m picturing a short film about some sharp investor who bought so much stocks in MSM companies that she can use those dividends to escape il Donny’s America and live in Monaco full time. I mean that’s what the super-rich are already doing, with regards to OTHER ‘externalities’ of their corporate holdings (climate change? No problem! Buy a swiss chalet! Pollution? Only poors drink tap water! Police brutality? Not with my personal security guard team!).

Come to think of it, il Donny’s whole campaign is an externality of a ratings-and-entertainment-driven ‘news’ system. He’s ‘ENTERTAINMENT POLLUTION’.

Let’s take a broader look at the concepts of ‘hate watching’ and ‘hater management’ and ‘my entire goddamn brand is I’m the person you love to hate’. It’s bigger than politics – for example, you also get that with Kanyaay and his his Armenian friends. ( if they had been famous in the ‘70s their show would be called The Big Sulker and His Ethnic Family Companions Comedy Variety Hour).

Ever since Geraldo, hate-watching has gotten more sophisticated and ‘balanced’ (i.e. the perfect reality program for a while has been something where people who hate so-and-so are just as likely to tune in as people who love so-and-so, just as likely to water-cooler-anecdote so-and-so’s antics, and most importantly, just as likely to assume that the producers of the show share their own views about so-and-so). As a business model, hate-watching makes perfect sense: you can double your audience size without finding a main character that more people like. Free money ,baby!

So it’s no coincidence that Trump came out of that ‘scene’: in the heavily spin-doctored realm of politics, even the slightest gaffe is a huge deal, but in reality-tv-land, the ability to make a memorable and offensive gaffe is what separates the wanna-bes from the pros. The funny thing is, he’s a hair away from winning the nomination AND WE’RE ALL STILL JUDGING HIM BY THE MORE LENIENT RULES OF REALITY-TV.

Which leads to the obvious question: in a world that’s pretty much forgotten the difference between ‘good attention’ and ‘bad attention,’ how much of Donny/Kanyaay/???’s crazy is them saying dumb shit they don’t even believe just to keep their internet mentions (or whatever they call it) high? Are ‘stars’ being motivated to be even more dickish because they need the haters?

And now on to the less-obvious question:. . . is it even POSSIBLE anymore for even the most famous individuals to get the amount of general across-the-board love that a JFK/ Marylin / Zero Mostel type got back in the 60s?

Is the only way to get that kind of recognition today to encourage haters, start a bunch of dumb shit for no reason, and act crazy? could media icons of the ‘good old days’ like Monroe, Joe DiMAggio, etc, pull half the numbers of a Tump or a Kanyay, without ‘doubling their ratings’ by recruiting millions of haters?

Put more apocalyptically, if a certain percentage of entertainers/politicians/media figures double their fame by encouraging hate-watchers, how long until EVERYONE has to do that, just to keep up with the arms race? and if everyone’s doing it, doesn’t that make us all contemptible opportunistic arrogant assholes?

The metric changed! They don’t measure how loved you are but how much you’re ‘driving traffic’ or ‘trending’ on ‘social media’ – no distinction between Yay! And Boo! Responses. The only way to rebel is to ignore them.

This election got me so hyperactive I’m making a twitter just to live-tweet debates with my particular style of caustic analytics, which I call caustalitics. Wait, no, analticks. Fuck, that should have been my handle. But instead my handle is

Phil Collins gets a pass for his work in Brand X, best fusion outfit of all time. I’m a fan of Genesis too, but Phil’s drumwork in that group was negligible – anyone could have done that shit. But still, fucking Brand X. So while I won’t be SAD if he relapses and dies, I’m not rooting for it.

Plus, U2 and Bruce Springsteen’s tour jets will collide in midair next year. I’m not going to say how I know this, but the ‘material’ has been aquired, the ‘moles’ are all in place: that shit is going down like a Malaysian Airlines jet. All that will remain will be some godawful tribute playlists and someone’s kidney, not sure whose but it will definitely poison several acres of farmland wherever it will hit.

First, thanks to everyone who commented on the previous post about “how do i get suckers to pay attention to me?”

I’ve decided to put all this year’s writing into an e-book, which I’m proof-reading right now, and should be done by New Year’s.

It’s gonna be called MAXIMUM SCENARIOS. And it’ll be like getting a year’s worth of TDR at once, except no Japan stuff.

I’ll let you know when it’s ready. But meanwhile 2 questions:

1) Where do people sell e-books? Amazon? Is there another place?

2) I agree with people who said this website makes it hard to find old posts. Does anyone know any wordpress plugins that make searching for old stuff eaiser? Ideally, I’d like something where, if you click on a category or tag, then the main part of the page (right here!) will display all the corresponding headlines at once. It would also be helpful to have a button on the bottom of the page saying ‘previous’ or ‘earlier writing’ or something.

OK, thanks again for support, and I’ll let you know when anything new happens.

Meanwhile, here’s a list of

BLUES SINGERS YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF BECAUSE THEY WERE INSUFFICIENTLY BLUE:

Everyone loves to laugh at Republican politicians who vote for anti-gay legislation… and then get caught in a bathroom somewhere, with their underwear wrapped around an undercover cop’s junk.

But I got an even better one for ya – and it’s so underground, neither the left nor the right media have talked about it!

Suppose one professor takes a stand against racial/ethnic cleansing, and as a result, loses his job.

Heroically tragic? Tragically heroic?

But then, there’s a second professor. Who not only disagrees with the first professor re: politics, but ALSO goes the extra step, and attacks the first guy personally, and finds it really ha-ha-funny that he got fired. Who even suggests that the fired guy is buddies with the campus bigot who had him fired. Ho ho ho!

It’s all very hilarious – until the second (asshole) professor, HIMSELF gets fired, for THE SAME EXACT ACCUSATIONS , the VERY NEXT YEAR .

And then screams to the heavens about how unfair it is.

If you read that plot in a Phillip Roth novel, you’d complain that the satire was to obvious and not realistic.

And who is this asshole who makes personal attacks against professors who are standing up for academic freedom?

And what was Finkelstein’s huge crime? What was the horrible thing that Finkelstein did, that made Salita gloat at his blacklisting from academia? Even though they’re both anti-Israel, and pro-Palestinian?

Finkelstein wants an end to the Israeli occupation, an end to the violence, justice for the victims of ethnic cleansing, and a two-state solution (Palestine as a separate country), and Salita wants an end to the Israeli occupation, an end to the violence, justice for the victims of ethnic cleansing, and . . . a one-state solution (total desegregation of Israel).

What the fuck? You guys are both fifteen feet into a marathon, and you’re throwing blows over how the last 10 inches is going to go? Jesus, no wonder the Left can’t get anything done ever.

Just goes to show, the Left media is NOT going to tell you the whole story. The only reason I even know about this NOW is, Max Blumenthal linked to this article . . . . because he was so up his own ass that he thought it made Salita look GOOD.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Max Blumenthal. I named my cat after Max Blumenthal. But it’s really trifling when people with petty personal beefs use political language to smear the other person. Because they know their twitter followers will respond more to accusations of “so-and-so is an xxx-ist”, more than if they said the REAL reason they don’t like the guy (“so-and-so was rude to me at a dinner party! Hey followers, get him!”). It’s just kind of shitty to use your little fame to rile up a mob for personal reasons. It’s shitty to your fans to use them like that.

201 Every Single Talk Show Ever Is So Boring I Can’t Even Be Bothered To Get Mad About Them (Which Makes Me So Pissed)
202 All 12-Bar Blues Jams Vs. The High Notes In Chinese Opera (Vs. Earplugs)
203 The Second That crumpled up used saran wrap with food moisture Leaves My Bowl, It Becomes gross like an old random sock on a street corner
204 whoever invented venetian fucking blinds vs. A Lethal Hail Of Maximum Velocity Pisscicles
205 Dispersing Adagio Movements By Force
206 Solo Cutters (Your Song Is Now Half As Long, You’re Welcome)
207 Intro Killers (Fade-Ins Don’t Work If You’re A Half-Deaf Old Rocker)
208 Find Fucking To-Do List (Is First Item On New To-Do List)
209 Aliens Invade, Turning All Girls Yelling WHOOOOOO Into Hans Moleman
210 They Turn Back To Normal After 24 Hours
211 Except They Have Pancreatic Cancer Now (Bug or Feature?)
212 People Who Write “Class Of ” On Their Cars Can Kiss The Class Of My Sphincter
213 Thank God Your Motorboat Has Tribal Tattoo Decals On It Otherwise I Would Remain Forever Unaware Of Its Badassedness
214 It Is Appalling That Even ONE Movie Has Been Made Re; A Woman Coming To Terms With Her Relationship With Her Mother
215 If An Instrument Suddenly Sounds Better And You Don’t Know Why, (Thank A Ring Modulator, Jabroni!)
216 Won’t You Come To My Rave Party? (Hands Flyer Soaking With Crab Jizz)
217 This Is How Much I Care About How To Pronounce “Microscopy” (Holds Aloft Single Hydrogen Atom Between Forefingers And Thumb)
218 I’m Twitter And I’m Mad This Pop Star Doesn’t Share My Politics (Because God Forbid I Drag My Radical Subversive Ass Out Of The Top 40) (Also I Need To Shut Up And Listen To Diamanda Galas)
219 Mother Of Sweet Satan Will No Amount Of Paperwork Satisfy The School Nurse?????
220 Be A Private Contractor Making Unuseable Yet Mandatory Websites For The Government (Because You Flunked Out Of Felching School)
221 Two Bureaucracies Both Insist The Documentation From The Other Is Flawed (And Yet *I* Am The One Who Gets In Trouble)
222 (Also Both Refuse To Fax Anything To Each Other (“To Protect Your Privacy”) So I Have To Fucking Shuttle Little Sheets Of Paper Back And Forth That Have Exactly Nothing To Do With The Services The Bureaucracies Are Supposed To Provide)
223 I Wonder What Ever Happened To Fallout Boy (Wait . . . No I Don’t)
224 Can We Just Admit That All Our Cherished Beliefs Are Just Arbitrary Meaningless Rituals Used For Social Chesion?
225 What If I Said Please? (Word To Stikky!)
226 Maybe It’s Time To Retire The Word ‘Sir’ (If Police Routinely Kill People While Sarcastically Saying It)
227 227 Reasons To Rock Out With ‘The Bludge’ (Each Reason Is A Song I Didn’t Make You Sit Through)
228 Marky Mark Crushed By Falling UFO Waste-Product (Funky Bunch Commits Ritual Seppuku)
229 Smartphones: Pacifiers For Adult Babies
230 Fuck, My Family Is Home (Again!)
231 Execute The Tsunaryev Brothers Because They Failed To Blow Up Most Of Boston
232 We Are Charging You $30 To Re-Buy Software You Already Bought, Because You Changed Computers (Also The “Improvements” To The New Version Consist 100% of Making The Interface Unreadable, Which Probably Could Have Been Done For A Mere $25)
233 I’m Avast! Anti-Virus And My Response To Letting You Get Infected On My Watch Is Basically A Little Pop-Up Window Offering To Sell You A More Powerful Upgrade.
234 Sure, State Farm, I Would Love To Devote An Entire Morning To Signing Up For Your App, But Only If You Send Me Junk Mail Advertising That Option About Twice A Week, Forever.
235 I’m So Sorry For Walking On Your Personal Jogging Trail, Sweaty Irritable White Dad Yelling At Me While Running Away Like A Bitch
236 What Kind Of Demon God Makes A 100% Carb Diet Bad For You???? (Word To Sourdough)
237 “Happy Birthday” Song Against Law And Punishible By Death (In Related Developments, National Anthem Now “Cuss Words” By Too $hort)
238 NSA Announces That Every Instance Of Software Not Working With New Version Of Windows Will Be Punished By Executives’ Kids Being Arrested On Blatantly Trumped-up Terrorism Charges
239 BMX Bike Kid Vs. Human-Sized Ant Lion Embedded In Race-Course (Make That A Bakers’ Dozen Human-Sized Ant Lions)
240 Bench Betta Have My Monkey!!
241 Hey White Dad Who Cut Down All The Trees In His Own Front Yard To Make More Room For His Christmas Lights Display In Fucking October (I Will Seriously Sew Every Single Light Into Your Scrotum And Crank Up The Juice)
242 Fucking Goat’s Always TROTTING
243 Abusing The Orph (Fatwa Burana)
244 The Quality of the New Yorker Is Wildly INconsistent From Issue To Issue!!
245 Daylight Savings Time Chows A Whole SEQUENCE Of Granny Parts
246 The Concept Of Planned Obsolesence Deflates My Pessary Something Fierce!
247 A Well-Placed Ostritch Kick Could Do Nothing But Improve My Bass Intonation
248 I’m Multicultural (But You’re Appropriating)
249 How Dare You Diversity-Trigger My Shame-Dentity?
250 Fuck You Future Self (You Have To Compose Music For All These After All, Suckaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

TRUMP
the news media dislike Trump so much not because ‘he’s turning the election into a reality show!’ but because he’s EXPOSING that it’s BEEN turned into a reality show for YEARS now,thanks to those same media. they’re pissed he’s blowing up their spot.

by emphasizing the horse-race aspect over serious policy, by commenting endlessly on personalities and flag pins and terrorist fist-bumps and etc, while censoring third-party candidates and avoiding issues that voters care about but which neither party cares about. . . the ‘real, serious’ media made it a reality show. By Citizens United and 501(c) fraud, they’ve made campaigns all about sponsors and ratings rather than democracy, and profited handsomely from that (who do you think GETS all those ‘unlimited anonymous campaign contributions?’ mostly tv stations, in the form of ad revenue)

So when they complain that he’s vulgar or fake, or that he’s not serious, they’re projecting. Honestly that could be the textbook example for psychoanalysis students.

If you make it a horse-race, eventually a fuckin horse is gonna enter the race.

Having said that, though, I’m halfway convinced that his whole campaign IS a stunt – specifically that it’s a radical viral marketing campaign for an actual reality show debuting in 2016, in which Trump will PLAY the POTUS. (tag line; “THEY SAID HE LOST THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY. THE REPUBLICANS LOST THE TRUMP PRIMARY!”)

Like the producers’ll make a fake White House, a fake Oval Office, and then give him little challenges every week to see what he’ll do, and viewers can pay to ‘vote’ on if he handled it well. “This week; Israel bombs Russia – can The Donald broker peace between them?” He’d be perfect for that because, if you launch a shitload of “nukes” and “blow up the world”, you’ll still be back next week, provided it got good ratings. The producers will lecture him on-camera about how if he really was President the population would be dead or diseased, etc, and he’d just make funny faces in response.

The apocalyptic nature of the show will become apparent in the second season (you think there won’t be a second season?!?); the first season he tried to actually solve problems and not wreck the planet, but the occasions when he lost control got such higher ratings, that by the second season they’ll abandon any pretense that wrecking the country constitutes failure; abandon any pretense that there is any continuity from week to week. every episode is a re-start.

Plus there could be a revolving-door aspect; every real government official who was fired for scandal or incompetence could get a job on the reality show as PresiDonald’s cabinet member, giving him advice and shit. Like all the times during the debates when he answered questions, “Well I don’t know the answer, but if I’m elected, I’ll learn, no prob.” . . . well, those will be the jokers teaching him the answers. If anything, this will only make the show more realistic.

They give him challenges that the REAL POTUS is facing that very week (i.e. russia, china, israel, syria, gun control, immigration) , things that the voters really want the real POTUS to solve for once and for all but he or she can’t ,because in real life those problems are difficult. But on the show, Trump’ll just be like “Nuke ’em all! Pew, pew, pew!! BOOOSHHHhhhh. How you like that, viewers!” and they will. Like it. It’ll be like a wish-fulfillment fantasy. “Why can’t the REAL president do that? Gummint sux!”

THE NEXT REPUBLICAN DEBATE
. . should just be limited to Adelson, the Kochs, Barbara, and Bibi Netenyahu having an on-stage pillow-fight over which one of their pet candidates should win the primary. They’re fed up with spending millions on ads that have very little effect – just settle it like gentlemen, and the losers agree to stop financing their pets, and everyone saves money. Free-market efficiency!!

Also, the next Repub debate is RIGHT before halloween. If that happened in The Simpsons, you’d be mad because, “it’s too unrealistic!” Oct. 28th.

Really, the only way to do it is to watch it with the sound off and Bach’s Tocatta Fugue In D Minor (i.e. The Phantom Of The Opera / Rollerball joint) on loop the whole time. Put some Ted Cruz / Fiorina effigies in the front yard to keep trick-or-treaters from approaching and interrupting. Rad.

I’ve never seen a right-wing rebuttal to the environmentalist idea of “negative growth.”

Here’s the environmentalists talking; “We’re running out of natural resources and yet all the governments (both communist AND capitalist) PLUS all the corporations are united in saying, ‘We have to produce more every year, we have to grow the corporation/GDP of country or else we are losers.’ So we are wasting our last bits of natural resources making billions of tons of plastic crap that no one even wants, just to pump up the corporate profits and GDP of our overlords.”

And , here’s comedian Doug Stanhope talking; “They say the job of government is to keep unemployment down. I say the job of government is to make unemployment 100%! Let the fucking machines do the work!”

He’s kidding, but it’s a serious point: technology has allowed one worker to do the work of 10 or even 100 people. Especially in areas like farming where once upon a time 90% of the people in the tribe had to spend all day growing or killing food. Now most of us can live our whole lives and never meet a farmer. So if we as a society can get by with just 3% of the population making enough food, why do the other 97% have to do ANYTHING for a living?

Sure, you’d still need people to do medicine and make houses and transport the food. But still if you added up all the people in America or Europe, I bet that all those jobs aren’t more than 10% of the people. So you’re still looking at a good solid 87% of motherfuckers that have to slave away their whole lives doing unnecessesary shit.

I know there are problems with this simplified and utopian way of thinking. But I’m mad that there are no right-wingers attacking it. It’s like it’s so far off the map they don’t even feel the need to defend themselves.

Hey, normal sellout-ass economists!

What exactly would go wrong if a country’s GDP went down?

What would happen if a corporation’s profits went down one year?

What chain of horrible events would unfold from this?

And is that chain of events automatically happen, like gravity or the speed of light? Or would this chain of bad consequences be avoidable by restructuring the economic system?

It’s like the economists that think about shit like this for a living have no background in ecology and never factor shrinking resources into their equations, and the hippies have no background in economics so they can’t articulate what a negative-growth economy/company might look like or need in order to function.

But to me it’s a fascinating debate.

And if square economists and think tank dongs won’t debate me, fuck it. I’m going to have to attack my OWN theory, just to get the ball rolling;

PROBLEM ONE; who would decide which jobs were bullshit?

I mean, human resources people and “image consultants” and “celebrity makeup artists” and people who spray the nice smell onto the toilet tissue at the TP factory, I think we can all agree that these are bullshit jobs. But what about stuff that I like, like musicians and artists? Aren’t these jobs also un-necessary, compared to farmers, doctors and house builders? (my gut response is, that the whole point of getting rid of jobs is to allow people to work less and enjoy life more, so professional entertainers/actors should lose their jobs but regular people should make their own entertainment and build their skills)

PROBLEM TWO; Why should the people laid off from bullshit jobs be rewarded with free food and shelter every month, while the people with “real” jobs still have to work their asses off? “Hey, but at least you are doing legitimate work!”

I guess for a lot of your low-skilled farming/construction jobs you could have people work 2 or 3 months a year, which would give enough time to train them to be semi-skilled workers. But

2a) there would still be a huge amount of labor time wasted, because instead of spending xxx hours training one full-time person, you’d be spending 10xxx hours training 10 part-time people. Hmm. Also,

2b) this still leaves the problem of how to compensate the super-skilled laborers, artisans, jet engine designers, lawyers, surgeons, engineers and etc, who would all have to work full-time, because the training takes years and not many people are qualified anyway.

PROBLEM THREE; if all the folks with bullshit jobs got prematurely retired so that they could lead carefree lives of self-improvement and creativity, that would make a huge increase in demand for books, paint, musical instruments, ceramics, and other “building blocks” of creativity and self-expression. Which would mean that certain OTHER people would have to be rounded up and sent BACK to work to make those things. “Happy retirement! Psyche! Get back to work!”

PROBLEM FOUR; a huge question that is hard to articulate; how would we ensure that the leisure time is “good leisure” (i.e. painting, writing, spending time with family) and not “bad leisure” (boredom, hopelessness, loss of dignity, feeling permanently unemployed, stuck 24/7 with a family you can’t stand, etc?)

PROBLEM FIVE: money! If 87% of the population is not working (or alternatively if everyone works just a few weeks a year) then how do they get the money to pay for necessities? welfare?

I mean if you pay farmers way more than everybody else, to compensate them for having to do work while everyone else is being a poet or fan-fiction-manga draw-er. . . that won’t solve the problem. Here’s why; If you increase their pay tenfold , then they’ll just only grow 10 percent of the crops they grew last year, make the same income they made last year, then take the rest of the year off, and then everyone else will starve. Or if they DID bust ass and make enough food, because lured by the promise of way more money than CEOs and lawyers. . .what would they spend the money on? All the jobs making neclaces and crowns and rolls royces went away.

Also this somehow ties in to the horrifying statistic about how , since the late ‘60s the average American worker’s productivity has gone waaaay up (due to better technology) and yet wages have remained constant or gone down. All the benefits from the productivity have gone to the CEOs and investors, and the skilled laborers got fired and replaced with robots. But they got rehired as burger flippers, who are flipping burgers 3 times as fast as burger flippers did in the ‘60s, so to an economist it’s all the same thing! It’s all good bro!

INTERMISSION

Here’s some links to a blogger I’ve been following for years, who is convinced 50 years from now there will be no more oil, gas, or electric utilities, and we’ll all be living like covered-wagon pioneers. It’s not a utopia by any means, but he works out the unforeseen consequences of gov’t policy, and the implications for the future, and tiny realistic details of how life will be, in a way that I wish more utopia-nerds would.

PART FUCKING TWO;
LEISURE.
Since I was a kid reading too much sci-fi, I’ve always believed the true measure of civilization is; “the more civilized a society is, the more free time everyone will have”

Now I’m older and smarter, I realize that this would be a tough sell to poor people of the world, in areas where they want but can’t get jobs, and don’t have the money to enjoy their leisure time, so they spend it being bored and frustrated.
So, first I have to make some theory of how to tell “good leisure” apart from “bad leisure”, and then somehow structure the utopian vision so that it maximizes the former and minimizes the latter. . . and THEN I can start selling it to The Poors in order to bring the revolution.

To start telling good leisure apart from bad, i’m imagining a sort of matrix.
Small matrix. Don’t panic. the top row is RICH, bottom is WORKERS. Left column is unhappy, right is happy. Simple enough.

upper left;
LOUCHE. believe it or not, there are some rich people who ALSO can’t enjoy their leisure because bored and no ambition or creativity, and are so isolated within their own privileged networks it never occurs to them to go new places and try new things. so they just get into some decadent shit to obliterate their crushing soul-lessness.

upper right
IDEAL
people who are rich enough to spend most of the week doing family stuff, creative stuff, meeting with like-minded hobbyists in RL to make communities, civic shit.

lower left;
GRUNTS
people who DO have a job but hate it. nuff said. working too much, in order to pay debts and etc.
lower right
UNDERCLASS
they can’t get a job but lack the a) money to enjoy their leisure, and, ironically just like the LOUCHE, they b) they’re kept so segregated, with few opportunities to experience different lifestyles, art-school training, or different places, that they simply lack . . . well, the imagination to think of free fun stuff. Nobody in Hunters Point is like “Hey fellows, tuesday is free astronomy night at the exploratorium!” pPlus if you’re poor , as they say, ‘you pay with time’, dealing with all the city bureaucracies to obtain food and shelter, penal bullshit., probably a lot of underclass people are busy anyway.
SOMEWHERE IN THERE
probably there should be a box for people who DO enjoy their jobs, or at least enjoy the work-life balance that their jobs give them. I’ve never met anyone like that, but – devil’s advocate – I’m assuming they’re out there, and probably I should talk to a few of them, if I want to solve the problem of “How do you tell essential workers – doctors, house-builders, farmers, truckers – to keep working when all the non-essential workers (human resources fuckos, junk-mail printers, musicians, people designing 4-color graphics for happy meal packaging, etc) to take a permanent vacation?”

Like I said, utopias are hard.

I am also working on an epic progressive rock tune in 11/7 time on this exact theme. There will be poor-quality imitation Mellotrons.